Barrett-Jackson Tuesday: 1954 Chevrolet Pickup Sells for $38,500

New Homes for Old Trucks

What is your truck or SUV worth? You, the builder who has sunk endless hours into the project, and I, the casual enthusiast who thinks all trucks are cool, might have some numbers in mind, but that quite frankly doesn’t matter. At the end of the day, it’s worth (or only worth) whatever someone is willing to pay. A C10 bought for 50K is immediately perceived to be more valuable than one purchased for 10K, even if they look identical. Perhaps it was a rare configuration, or owned by a celebrity, or was rich in history, or was a quality restoration, or was purchased by a drunk buyer. I’m sure it happens. The bottom line is that the price tag attached to a vehicle reveals its true value, mostly. Sometimes that value is obvious to the onlooker, and sometimes it is not. Would I have known I was standing next to the Shelby Cobra CSX2000 at work one day? No way. Once someone explained this was the first Cobra, for which a 25 million dollar offer was supposedly turned down, I suddenly looked at the tattered driver’s seat of that little unrestored car a little differently. It’s unfathomable. Remember that paint and shiny wheels don’t automatically make a car worthwhile.

Barrett-Jackson is full of informed buyers, so if your vehicle is worth money, it’ll be revealed at a place like this. The main question for us on the sidelines of this rich-person shopping spree is, “How much did it sell for?” That’s what we really want to know. If it sells for a lot, we think it’s cool. If it doesn’t sell for a lot, we suddenly think it sucks. It’s always kind of a mystery to the uninformed voyeur.

Since the Barrett-Jackson Collector Car Auction is full of cool classic, custom, modern and restored trucks, we figured it might be informative to show what each day’s selection sold for, in order of most expensive to least expensive. Enjoy this collection of trucks auctioned off on Tuesday, day 1 of Barrett-Jackson.